Taking a few days off from Eve to try and get myself back into PVP mode. Lost three Asteros, one of which was to rats when I ran off to let my dog out and then talk to my wife.

Two Ebil Sabres Kill a Poor, Innocent Archeologist

The first loss was to two Sabres that caught me on a Relic site. I had managed to at least see him early enough to get aligned and I hit my MWD. He was forced to chase me and to keep on dropping bubbles while I raced away. His ship was only slightly faster than mine and did manage to get close enough at the last to scram me.

But, with the battle now joined, my drones started to chew him up. My Astero fit is a pretty solid and it was showing that fact against this particular Sabre. The fight was actually going in my favor with him in about 15% shield, before his buddy showed up and neuted me. That was just too much and soon I lost my ship and pod. Too bad that first Sabre pilot wasn’t alone.

As I mentioned before, my Astero fit is a pretty solid fit. Up until now, if it was a solo fight with another frig or destroyer, I usually came out the winner. But that didn’t happen this time. I got into a fight that turned out to be a one-sided fight between myself and another Astero piloted by Ber Cos of Ocularis Inferno. He caught me running a relic site in a wormhole when he pointed and scrammed me.

Normally, I think that an Astero pilot (or any frigate pilot for that matter) that does this is going to have a rude awakening when they find out that my Astero can do more than just sites. So I dropped my Hobos and proceed to scram him back. The nose of my Astero pointed to the nose of his Astero.

The fight starts out as just a slugfest between our drones. His Hobos and my Hobos are pounding each other’s Asteros. We both go into armor and the real battle begins.. Or so I think. You see most Astero fits, including the combat ones, run one SAR or maybe a Small AAR, as those pilots typically run into either non-tanked or poorly tanked T1, Covert Ops, and Astero pilots who have over-focused on exploration.

So when I see Ber’s Astero go into half armor relatively quickly, I am not worried. I am not worried when it gets repaired, and it goes into half armor again. And again.. And again.. And again. After a number of times where his armor gets repped back up to half and ¾ armor that I realize that this guy’s fit is better than mine. And that he’s going to win.

At this point, I know that he’s been keeping me hooked into the fight by letting me think I was out tanking him. However, I am way too deep in trouble and despite all my efforts to slink away, my ship explodes in a shower of now antiquated sparks and metal.

Leaving with my pod, we exchange GFs in local and in our conversation, I had to congratulate him on his much better Astero fit. The reward for that respect was a copy of that fit, which I have subsequently began using for myself. I may have lost that fight, but I got a good education and a good, more solid fit. I wish all my fights turned out that good. Salute, Ber Cos.

As many of you well know, Rorquals have become the new PVP capital ship of choice. It has also become the new mining ship of choice. Part of the issue also relates to the new ‘Excavator’ drones which effectively turn the Rorquals into a one-man mining juggernaut. That also is being addressed. As I have neither a Rorqual, or mining drones, but have heard the annoyance in other coalition members of being hot-dropped by Rorquals I do think this is a good change. And with miners bragging about how much isk per hour they make mining using Rorquals and Excavator drones, I think that needed to be addressed as well.

So, the cliff notes version of this is that static warp bubbles are now going to have a time limit. That time limit ranges from 2 days for a T1 bubble to 2 weeks for a Syndicate faction bubble. T1 bubbles will get a reduction in hitpoints, while the T2 and Faction bubbles will get an increase. The timer for these bubbles can be reset by picking up the bubble and redeploying it.

I personally think this is way too long. I think that T1 bubbles should be like 12 hours, T2 maybe a day or a little more, and Syndicate bubbles at most a few days. Especially if you have the ability to pick it up and redeploy it then there is no reason to have that long of time Having such long periods of time just promotes the plethora of “bubble-f**k” gates, which I loathe.. But it is better than what it is right now.

So, right now the only thing that affects me on this is the changes to fighters. With their sig radius increased between 100% to 200%, and fixing the almost non-existent bug of NPCs not targeting fighters (not sure what metric they are using but in Gurista space they were pretty consistent about locking my fighters when I was running sites), we’re likely to see Carrier ratting going a bit out of style, or an increase in market for T1 fighters.

The other changes really don’t affect me much. Sure, maybe when I am rich I’ll have a Hel and I will spin it in station to see how pretty it is. And the same with the Burst projectors.. Really not much reason to get that interested in them aside from noting the increase in time.

This thread opens up the option of having two types of focused warp scripts. They would now be similar to Warp Distruptor or Warp Scramblers, not just once script with both options. The Warp Scramble Script would have 20% less range, but would not allow the target to use MWD prop mods.

All in All

Now, salty industrial tears are always delicious, but in this case, the industrialists need to understand that things were WAY out of wack with the Rorqual, and even with the changes to the Excavator drones, they still are a pretty powerful mining system. I didn’t even bother to count the posts of miners who were claiming that these changes were a violation of the EULA (it isn’t), or would destroy mining (not even close), or that the value of their Rorquals and Drones would drop so much that they should get repaid in isk (hehe, no. HTFU).

So, until next time. Make sure your guns are always loaded, and your targets locked.